


don't throw it away

by corvidseries



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: ??? - Freeform, Multi, Noah Czerny-centric, Set Mid-The Raven King, does it count as mcd if hes been dead the whole time, idk what this is it's weird im sorry, only mentions of relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 05:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18653905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvidseries/pseuds/corvidseries
Summary: So they are all together, a haphazard group of Welsh king-hunters, and in the midst of hearing Gansey preach about history and Ronan swearing and Adam snarking and Blue sighing, Noah stops thinking about being dead.





	don't throw it away

**Author's Note:**

> for anyone who's also read my other works: i'll be updating call her a god soon, i just haven't been feeling it lately lol. anyway have some weird shit i wrote in like a fog at 11 pm

Noah Czerny has been dead for seven meaningless years that pass in a blur of Aglionby sweaters and Aglionby boys and Aglionby lawns meshed with the knowledge that no matter where he is, he is really lying, rotting, on the forest floor, powerless and dying again and again. Seven meaningless years of watching his friends grow up and leave Henrietta, except they’re not his friends, because no matter how hard he tries, he is not the real Noah Czerny. He is the Noah Czerny who was _murdered murdered murdered_ , and he is doomed both never to know and always to remember.

Then there is Gansey, Richard Campbell Gansey III, obsessed, like Noah, with his own death. It’s no wonder they make friends. That, and Noah invented a myth that might have been Gansey's reason for living for seven years. That, and Noah is destined for this, to let himself die when he should not, to sacrifice himself for a boy living when he should not. He hopes Gansey doesn't find out how empty that time was, not yet. Neither of them talk about their deaths the way they think about them.

Noah knows anyway.

Then there is Ronan Lynch, the Greywaren, broken so that he is sharp-edged, a beautiful wreck of a boy, filled, like Noah, to the brim with creativity and energy. Like Noah was, anyway. Ronan is friends with Gansey, so Noah is friends with Ronan. Even after he threw him out a window.

Then there is Adam Parrish, the magician, but not yet. Time is a circular, confusing thing when you’re dead; Noah is always experiencing all the time and yet time slips through his fingers like sand, the sand of the riverbank in the forest where Noah dies, maybe every day, maybe once. Adam is soft, delicate, if you look at him too fast, but Noah sees the brittleness of his set jaw and his clenched fist and the deep, deep shame that lives inside him. Adam is far _more_ than any of them knew, and that is why Cabeswater ~~Ronan~~ chose him slash chooses him slash will choose him.

Noah understands what that is like, to have secrets and be ashamed of having them.

Later, he will understand what it is to lash out at the people he loves who love him, in the form of a shattered pot of mint and a crack in the wall and a thousand deaths, murdered murdered murdered murdered-

Then there is Blue Sargent, the mirror, and that is the beginning of everything. The search for Glendower, the summer of dreaming, the death of Gansey and then of Cabeswater, and the start of it all over again in the woods where a boy dies when he should not and another lives when he should not (Noah makes a point of memorizing the words, so he will be ready when _everything_ comes to an end). Blue makes things quiet for Gansey, soothes his death-fears even as she knows she will kill him someday. Blue makes Noah loud, gives him a rush of energy every time they touch, a little of himself back.

_Tell her I’m sorry for drinking her birthday shnapps_ , he tells Blue, because around her, he stops remembering death and learns life, again. He lets her paint glitter on his face with Orla’s makeup, too.

So they are all together, a haphazard group of Welsh king-hunters, and in the midst of hearing Gansey preach about history and Ronan swearing and Adam laughing and Blue sighing, Noah stops thinking about being dead. He loves Blue and Blue loves Gansey and Gansey loves Ronan and Ronan loves Adam and it’s all reciprocated, and it’s magic, different and less tangible than Ronan’s dreams or Henrietta’s demons, magic like nothing seventeen-year old for seven years Noah has ever known, will know beyond this.

He kisses Blue, and it’s mostly awful, but it’s him and it’s her, so it’s also wonderful.

Adam doesn’t kiss Blue, but they kind of date, and it ends up being mostly awful, because Blue’s true love is Adam’s best friend. Who hasn’t fallen in love with Gansey at this point, anyway?

Adam and Ronan kiss, and that’s right, Cabeswater’s maker and Cabeswater’s body, pressed together as naturally as a dream forest growing out of magical ground.

Blue and Gansey will kiss, someday soon, and Noah is almost at the end of this turn of the wheel, waiting for the screaming of crows and the non-waking of the Raven King. He will go back, and he will give Gansey a purpose for seven eventually-meaningless years, and then he will go somewhere his cowardly ghost-self doesn’t want to think about.

He listens to his friends bicker and joke, and he slips the _Murder Squash Song_ into Adam’s weird Hondayota radio when no one is watching, and the air is warm on his cold skin as they come together to make one big, happy entity. He is not a pile of withering bones dying and dying in a forest dreamed by his friend, he is a living being with friends who are all a little too old for their age and not quite enough from this world. This is enough, he thinks, enough to fill those seven years, for him and for Gansey, the searcher of Glendower, more than any of them.

His hands are cold, but his heart is warm.

Noah learns to forget, because he is ~~murdered~~ **remembered**.


End file.
